In the News

The Hill: On voter privacy, we’ve taken one step forward and two steps back

By Alex Cordell

The recent controversy over a White House commission request for voter data shows many state officials support protecting the privacy of this information. However, too many states also favor new ways to violate the privacy of supporters of charities, advocacy groups, and trade associations by requiring these groups to reveal information about the names, home addresses, employers, and donation amounts of their members…

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said she would “never release the personally identifiable information of New Mexico voters” and claimed she would continue “protecting the voting rights and personal privacy of our voters.”…

In New Mexico, Secretary of State Toulouse Oliver has proposed a new rule invading the privacy of supporters of groups, including charities. She wants to publicly reveal the names and home addresses of supporters of such groups for merely mentioning candidates or even publishing nonpartisan information…

It is encouraging that so many states are asserting the need to protect voter privacy from government overreach. However, we should not forget that individual privacy rights are violated every day by overreaching, poorly-written campaign finance laws.

The Courts

WWL-TV New Orleans: Federal judge’s order blasts Terrebonne Sheriff for ‘ExposeDAT’ blog investigation

By Katie Moore

A U.S. District Court judge cleared the way for a Terrebonne Parish blogger and her husband to sue Sheriff Jerry Larpenter for violations of her civil rights…

Jennifer and Wayne Anderson sued Sheriff Larpenter after he searched their home and seized the family’s computers and cell phones a year ago. Larpenter ordered one of his detectives to secure a search warrant under the guise of a criminal defamation investigation into Jennifer Anderson’s blog, “ExposeDAT.”…

In a scathing order filed Wednesday, July 19, U.S. District Judge Lance Africk denied Larpenter’s motion to throw out the case in its entirety, allowing the constitutional claims to proceed…

“Given the longstanding and robust constitutional protections afforded speech involving public officials (and speech involving public funds), it can be argued based on these allegations that Sheriff Larpenter acted with at least deliberate indifference to the risk that his actions would violate the Andersons’ constitutional rights,” Africk wrote…

“Jennifer Anderson’s speech falls squarely within the four corners of the First Amendment,” Africk wrote.

IRS

Fox News: Albuquerque Tea Party granted tax-exempt status after 8 years

It’s taken nearly eight years, but the Internal Revenue Service finally granted tax-exempt status to a Tea Party group in what lawyers representing the group on Wednesday called a “major victory for free speech.”…

The group filed its request in December 2009. Several months later, the IRS demanded more documentation concerning the organization’s activities. The group complied, but then the IRS requested even more documentation. The Tea Party provided more than 1,000 pages of documentation about the group’s activities. Eventually, it filed a lawsuit against the IRS…

“The ACLJ is pleased to announce that after a long, arduous legal battle, our client, the Albuquerque Tea Party, has finally received their tax-exempt status – nearly eight years after originally filing their 501(c)(4) application,” the organization said in a statement on its website Wednesday. “This is a major victory for free speech.”…

“This is outrageous,” the group said. “No organization should ever be forced to wait that long for a determination.”

Candidates and Campaigns

Washington Post: Postal Service broke law in pushing time off for workers to campaign for Clinton, investigation finds

By Lisa Rein

The U.S. Postal Service engaged in widespread violations of federal law by pressuring managers to approve letter carriers’ taking time off last fall to campaign for Hillary Clinton and other union-backed Democrats, investigators said Wednesday.

High-level postal officials had for years granted employees’ requests for unpaid leave, leading last year to an “institutional bias” in favor of Clinton and other Democrats endorsed by the National Association of Letter Carriers, one of the largest postal unions. The Postal Service’s Office of Special Counsel and inspector general found that the agency violated the Hatch Act…

The investigation found that 97 letter carriers took time off, sometimes weeks, to take part in the union’s Labor 2016 program, canvassing, making phone calls and working on other get-out-the-vote efforts to help elect Clinton and other pro-labor candidates. The workers were dispatched to battleground states, including Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio. They were reimbursed for their unpaid leave by the union’s political action committee.

The States

San Francisco Chronicle: Bill would bring truth to political advertising

By Editorial Board

This year, a revised version of the Disclose Act (AB249) was nearly derailed by the Democratic leadership in the state Senate. Its Rules Committee initially refused what should have been a routine procedural move – allowing Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, to assume authorship from former Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles, after the latter was elected to Congress.

On Wednesday, the committee relented, and AB249 remains alive, with Mullin as author.

It’s no mystery why a major reform bill supported by a wide array of good-government and progressive organizations would encounter parliamentary games in the Democrat-controlled Senate: opposition from some labor groups, which carry outsize influence in Sacramento. If anything, the resistance from interests that engage in elections only highlights the need for disclosure…

“This will get to who the real source of the funds is,” Mullin said in a phone interview Thursday. He said he would have liked the bill to go further – to include independent spending for and against candidates, not just ballot measures – but this is a “marked improvement” over current law.

Governing: Lobbyist Gift-Giving at Issue in More States

By Scott Rodd

The laws that govern gift-giving from lobbyists to public officials vary widely from state to state. In Pennsylvania and other states with relatively lenient laws, good-government activists and some elected officials have been working to impose tougher restrictions on gift-giving by lobbyists…

In Missouri, where lobbyists can give unlimited gifts to lawmakers, Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, made the issue a pillar of his 2016 campaign and signed an executive order on his first day banning employees in his office from accepting gifts from lobbyists. The state House of Representatives in January passed a bill to ban lobbyists from giving gifts to elected officials, though it died in the Senate…
And in South Dakota, a new law signed in March sets an annual $100 limit on gifts from lobbyists to legislators and other public officials…   In Kentucky, a federal judge last month struck down key parts of a strict state law that regulates lobbyist gift-giving and campaign contributions. In his opinion, Judge William Bertelsman of the U.S. district court for the Eastern District of Kentucky court said the state’s restrictions on lobbyists violated their First Amendment rights.

Santa Fe New Mexican: Rep. Pearce sues secretary of state over campaign funds

By Andrew Oxford

Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce is asking a federal judge to overrule the state’s top election officer and allow him to transfer about $1 million from his congressional campaign to finance a run for governor.

Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, has told Pearce he must abide by New Mexico’s campaign contribution limits and cannot take more than $5,500 he raised as a congressman to pay for his primary election campaign for governor.

But in a lawsuit Thursday, Pearce’s campaign argued that barring him from using the war chest he amassed on Capitol Hill would violate the First Amendment, and it accused Toulouse Oliver of partisan bias.

The lawsuit sets up a showdown over New Mexico’s campaign finance laws that could have far-reaching consequences.

Washington Times: DeVos urges state legislators to take on foes of campus free speech

By Valerie Richardson

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered a reminder Thursday to state legislators frustrated by protests shutting down free speech at public universities: You control the purse strings.

Ms. DeVos, who delivered her remarks at the American Legislative Exchange Council annual meeting, said that “we all have a role to play in reversing the trend” toward campus intolerance, which has been manifested in recent years with the muzzling of conservative speakers and viewpoints.

“For state legislators, you have the power of the purse,” she said. “And I wouldn’t hope to suggest how you might approach that, but I think that really bringing some of the most egregious examples to the forefront – we all have the opportunity to use our bully pulpits to talk about these things and bring light to places of darkness where speech is not being allowed to be free and open and heard.”

South Carolina State: Lt Gov’s fundraising exposed an even bigger loophole in SC ethics law

By Cindi Ross Scoppe

Add this to the list of problems with South Carolina’s campaign-finance law: You don’t have to run for election to hit up special interests for campaign donations.

We learned about this because Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant has raised more than $100,000 for the 2018 election for lieutenant governor – even though there will not be a 2018 election for lieutenant governor…

What allowed Mr. Bryant to collect donations of up to $3,500 from people who might want official favors from him is a section of the campaign-finance law that I had never paid any notice to until State Ethics Commission Director Steve Hamm said it made Mr. Bryant’s fundraising legal: the definition of a “candidate.”

A candidate, the law says, is not simply someone running for elective office. A candidate is “a person who seeks appointment, nomination for election, or election to a state or local office.”

Truth-Out: Lawsuit Challenging Seattle Voucher Program Unlikely to Succeed

By Brent Ferguson

PLF’s complaint alleges that Seattle’s voucher program “disfavors minority interests” since more popular candidates will receive more funding (through vouchers) than unpopular candidates. This charge is unlikely to go anywhere. Most notably, in its seminal 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court upheld the presidential public financing system, which, like Seattle’s program, provides more money to candidates with more grassroots support (by matching the amount they raise in small contributions during the primaries). The Court did not so much as hint that amplifying the voices of small donors improperly “disfavor[ed] minority interests.” Following the Supreme Court’s lead, federal courts have routinely upheld state and city programs that do the same thing.